Doug Richards

A highly respected jazz arranger, bandleader, and educator, Doug Richards is the founder of the jazz studies program at Virginia Commonwealth University. Along with teaching, he launched the repertory jazz orchestra Great American Music Ensemble (aka GAME) and he's transcribed jazz performances for Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks; he's also produced albums with Grammy-nominated guitarist Anthony Wilson. He oversaw GAME's 2016 debut, It's All in the Game. and in 2023 showcased his jazz orchestra with the Antonio Carlos Jobim album Through a Sonic Prism. Born in 1947 in Pittsburgh, Richards played trumpet growing up. Around age 12, he heard a recording by the Glenn Miller Orchestra that ignited his passion for jazz. Soon he was checking out albums by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and others. As a teenager, he attended several of the Stan Kenton jazz camps held at Michigan State University and elsewhere. After high school, he enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston where he studied jazz performance and arranging from 1956 to 1969. He moved into education, teaching junior high school band in Norwell, Massachusetts, before relocating to Atlanta where he split his time between teaching as an adjunct professor at Georgia State and Georgia Tech while composing music on the side for commercials and writing high school marching band arrangements. By 1979, he had accepted a job leading the theory/stage bands at Virginia Commonwealth University and in 1980 he helped found VCU's jazz studies program. In 1997, he was bestowed with the Outstanding Teaching Award from VCU. In his over 40-plus-year career, he has mentored hundreds of students, many who have gone on to successful professional careers, including James Genus, Clarence Penn, Nate Smith, Steve Wilson, and others. Away from teaching, he has transcribed jazz performances for Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks, lectured at the Smithsonian Institute, and spent several years on the jazz faculty of Gunther Schuller's Festival at Sandpoint, Idaho. It was through his work at the festival that he met guitarist Anthony Wilson and produced two of Wilson's first albums, including 1998's Grammy-nominated Goat Hill Junket. Richards is also the founder of the professional repertory jazz orchestra the Great American Music Ensemble, with whom he presented an annual concert series at the Kennedy Center's Terrace Theater. He also oversaw the recording of the ensemble's 2016 album It's All in the Game. In 2023, he released his large ensemble album Through a Sonic Prism that explored the works of iconic Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Jobim.
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